A collection documenting the history of social protest movements and marginalized political communities from the 19th century to the present

In the 1930s, the U-M Library’s Joseph A. Labadie Collection — the oldest publicly accessible archive of its kind in America — was called “probably the most complete record of the social unrest of our times that has ever been assembled.“

Since then, the collection has only grown, expanding from its original focus on anarchism to also encompass antheism and free thought, anti-colonialist movements, anti-war and pacifist movements, civil liberties and civil rights, labor and workers’ rights, LGBTQ movements, prisons and prisoners, New Left, Spanish Civil War, youth and student protest, and many more.